But what was clear to US command at the time was that the Imperial Japanese war machine had been thoroughly crushed by August 1945. They had been on a non-stop losing streak since Midway. What was the remaining risk to the US? What was the chance there was going to be another Pearl Harbor like event at that point? About as close to zero as possible. That's one of the main things that makes it feel hard to justify further mass killing of civilians.
What if Japan has just never surrendered? Would that have been justification to drop an atomic bomb on every civilian population center one after another?
Japan never posed serious risk to the US in the first place.
> That's one of the main things that makes it feel hard to justify further mass killing of civilians.
Japan had occupied much of East Asia including large parts of China and was conducting absolutely brutal campaigns of repression.
> What if Japan has just never surrendered? Would that have been justification to drop an atomic bomb on every civilian population center one after another?
The justification is that as soon as you stop containing them in their island. They would instantly start to go on the offensive again.
Long term containment was considered by the US Navy as an alternative, but it would hardly be less brutal then nukes.
What would you have the US do, simply say, well I guess you learn your lessen and go home. Leave Japan to reconquer East Asia again after a few years?
The nukes were worthwhile to try because they had the capability of totally shifting the political conversation inside of Japan, and they did.
Each attack and action had to be individually considered one after another. If nukes would not have shifted to strategic calculation, potentially another policy would have been attempted.
I think there's a couple of counter-examples to the "they need to surrender for peace" argument.
After World War 1 Germany surrendered. That did not result in a good outcome.
After Desert Storm, Saddam Hussein never invaded Kuwait again. Not that he didn't want to of course, but he was easily contained by a superior military coalition.
Even if they wanted to fight to the last man, the most hawkish Japanese military heads would have considered it infeasible to strike out again after WW2. Before Pearl Harbor they already knew the US was stronger than Japan, and that the gap would only widen as time went on. Japan's confidence was in large part due to the alliance with Germany and the belief that Germany would win the war in the European theater. That opportunity (if you want to call it that) was never going to happen again.
> After World War 1 Germany surrendered. That did not result in a good outcome.
Germany accepted a temporary cease fire and because of that and economic blockade their society collapse throwing them into social revolution. That forced the government to accept unconditional surrender.
> Even if they wanted to fight to the last man, the most hawkish Japanese military heads would have considered it infeasible to strike out again after WW2.
You would be surprised how fast countries can rebound. See Germany and Russia in WW2. Literally everybody in the free world believed that it would be insane to fight another war like that but just 10-15 years after WW1 both countries were hell bent on overthrowing the WW1 world.
And its almost 100% certain that a 'stab in the back' type legend would have developed in Japan too.
And having an enemy that is just waiting for the next opportunity to start a war again, isn't exactly a great strategy in foreign relations.
"With these totals I calculated (lines 412 and 413) the overall and annual democide rate (for the occupied population, at its greatest extent). As can be seen, nearly one out of every one-hundred people controlled by Japan was murdered, or almost three per thousand people per year." (https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP3.HTM)
At the end of the war, Japan had over 1,000,000 soldiers in China alone.
I think in some way Afghanistan is an example of what could have happened if Japan never surrendered: years of insurgency, loss of life on both sides, and maybe after twenty years the USA, having had enough, would have left the country.
I think that in the end it worked better for Japanese than Afghans, although some the latter can boast to have beaten the American.
Afghanistan is low level conflict for a while. Japan was a modern army hell bent on taking attrition on the invaders.
In Japan its very unlikely to work out anything like Afghanistan. Once the Japan government was defeated, its unlikely you would have seen a popular insurgency in Japan.
And in Japan an island dominated by allied navies such efforts cold not be sustained anyway.
That actually was a serious concern, both to the US and to the Japanese government itself. If the Emperor and the military leaders had been killed, there was no one who could legitimately order the remaining military to surrender. And the Japanese Army was not small at the end of the war (https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/there-are-no-...). In addition to the military in Japan (900,000 on Kyushu to oppose US landings), there were something like 1,500,000 in China, Burma, and Southeast Asia.
The result could have been "warlord" led militaries seeking to establish their own territories and fighting with others. Not unlike Afghanistan or China in the 1920s and 1930s, or some other failed states around the world.
Newly free from the European theater, I think Stalin wanted to move in. I'm against the nuclear bombings, but I think if it was between reality as it is now and an alternate history where Japan was cut in half like Korea, I'd choose reality as it is now.
In my opinion Stalin had literally zero chance of invading Japan. They didn't have the ships to do it, and the US would certainty not transport them there.
What if Japan has just never surrendered? Would that have been justification to drop an atomic bomb on every civilian population center one after another?